14 DAY TRIAL // Inside sources told CNBC today that Google and Salesforce are interested in buying Twitter. A second source confirmed to TechCruch that Microsoft and Verizon have also approached the social media giant with bids.
Just the news of Google being interested in buying the company boosted Twitter share prices today by 20 percent, increasing Twitter's estimated value from $13 billion to $15.5 billion.
Sources told CNBC that Twitter only received "expressions of interest," but a formal bid is expected soon. There are no clear favorites at the moment.
Twitter has been secretly up for sale for almost a year
The Twitter board has been looking for a buyer after it replaced its previous CEO, Jack Costolo, with one of Twitter's co-founders and former CEO, Jack Dorsey.
The company has been making moves left and right, like buying the rights to stream live NFL Thursday Night games, but to no avail, with revenue and user numbers stagnating for years.
No clear favorite, yet
Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce faced each other before when they fought to buy LinkedIn. Microsoft won the bidding war after agreeing to pay $26.2 billion.
Verizon had previously bought Yahoo! after agreeing to pay $4.8 billion for only a few selected assets. Verizon won the bidding war against private equity firm TPG and a group of investors led by Dan Gilbert.
Out of all the buyers, Salesforce has the smaller wallet. Most likely, Twitter will go to one of the three other companies, with Microsoft itching at the idea of controlling its own social network and rivaling Facebook and Google.
Google recently made small changes to YouTube by adding a Facebook Wall-like feature to user accounts. The feature is currently in limited testing with a few select top users (called creators). Google still runs Google+, but the service has been stripped of most of its coolest features, which have been branched into their own services, such as Google Photos.
